At Zimmer and Peacock we are here to help our clients and customers. This week we had an enquiry about the EIS and potentiostats of Zahner that ZP distributes in the Nordics and UK.
In the short post below we have answered some of the recent questions we received.
1. The Zahner system can be controlled by windows7/8/10-PC, though the Win10 machine is not supplied';this means that if you have a Win10 machine you can run the software.
2. Some of the Zahner potentiostats are advertised as having Controlled voltage: ±15 V / ±5 V, what this means is that you can choose to operate the instrument at ±15 V or ±5 V; you will use the ±5 V voltage often in applications like the Gratzel cell etc, whilst you will use the ±15 V setting in power applications like batteries and fuel cells. Switching between ±15 V or ±5 V is an option in the software.
3.What is the difference between the compliance voltage and the controlled voltage? Often in an electrochemical cell we will have the working electrode, the counter electrode and the reference electrode. The electrochemist is often interested in controlling the voltage at the working electrode (called controlled voltage), but what we as electrochemists sometimes over look is that the potentiostat then applies another voltage to the cell at the counter electrode called the compliance voltage. The reason that the potentiostat applies this compliance voltage at the counter electrode is because the rate of reaction at the counter electrode needs to be as fast as the rate of reaction/current at the working electrode. So in summary the controlled voltage is what we apply at working electrode, whilst the compliance voltage is what the potentiostat applies to the counter electrode to ensure the rate of reaction at the working electrode is as fast as it need to be.
4. Zahner instruments come with extra slots for additional hardware modules, these slots can be used for additonal cards like the TEMP/U and the PAD4. For example the TEMP/U allows for the measurement of parameters such as pH, temperature etc within the electrochemical cell, whilst teh PAD4 is often used to measure 4 electrochemical cells that are in a battery or fuel cell stack.
5.The PAD4 is useful in applications where you have for example a series of electrochemical cells stacked together to form a battery. The Zahner potentiostat would allow you to measure the impedance across the entire battery, but if you want to know how individual cells within the batter are performing you can use the PAD4 to measure up to 4 cells within the stack, of course the more PAD4 cards you use the more cells within a stack you can measure.
6 The PP211 is often supplied with Zahner CIMPS systems, this is because the Zahner CIMPS system has a light source and the P211 is the 'power supply to that light source.
